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ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE 



THE PHILODEMIC SOCIETY, 



COMMENCEME^^T OP GEORGETOWN COLLEGE, 



A U G U S 1' 2 > I ^s -I 



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BY AT F MAURY. LIEUT, i 



WASHINGTON: 

PRINTED BY J. AKD (;. S. GIDEOX 



1846. 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE 



THE PHILODEMIC SOCIETY, 



COMMENCEMENT OF GEORGETOWN COLLEGE, 



AUGUST 28, 1846. 



BY M/F« MAURY, LIEUT. U. S. NAVY. 




Co WASHINGTON: 

rRINTED BY J. AND G. S. GIDEON. 



1846 



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WASHINGTON, July 30, 184G. 
Lieut. M. F. Maury, U. S. N. 

Dear sir: The undersigned, a committee appointed at the last annual meeting of the 
Philodemic Society, to procure a copy for publication of your able address, delivered at 
the late Annual Commencement of Georgetown College, take great pleasure in complying 
with their instructions, and respectfully request a copy for that purpose. 
We have the honor to be, with great respect, your obedient faithful servants, 

JOHN CARROLL BRENT, 
EUGENE CUMMISKEY, 
ALEXANDER J. SEMMES. 



OBSERVATORY, July 31, 1846. 

Gentlemen : Accept my thanks for the agreeable manner in which you have made 

known the wishes of the Philodemic Society, with regard to the address I had the honor 

to deliver before them at the late commencement of Georgetown College. 

As it is the wish of the Society to have a copy of the address for publication, I herewith 

enclose it. 

Respectfully, &c. 

M. F. MAURY. 
Messrs. John Carroll Brent, "^ 

Eugene Cummiskby, and > Com. Philodemic Society^ Present. 

Alexander J. Semmes, 3 



ADDRESS 



It has often been remarked, that the most subhme moral 
spectacle which the world affords, is an honest man strug- 
gling with adversity. But to me, the most beautiful is that 
which we here have before us — a band of generous youth, 
full of gay dreams, and bright hopes, just ready to launch out 
upon the world ; their untried barques freighted with col- 
lege treasures, many noble resolves, and high aspirations. 

The business of life, the world and its ways, are to them 
like an unknown island to the mariner in the midst of the 
ocean — beautiful in the distance, rich with verdure and en- 
chanting to the imagination, but surrounded with shoals he 
knows not where, and peopled with inhabitants he knows 
not whom. The prudent sailor, after he has passed, like my 
young friends here, the difficulties of the first approach, 
proceeds to land with the utmost caution. Dreading no- 
thing so much as the snares which may be laid for him in 
treachery or deceit, he goes armed ; but his arms are only 
for defence. Firm of purpose, unjust to none, true to him- 
self, he is resolved to follow the line of his duty. If diffi- 
culty and danger beset in such a path, he faulters not, but 
meets them with a will. 

Whenever and wherever I meet a youth just starting out 
upon this sea of life, my heart instantly warms towards 
him. I always feel a desire to come within hail, to run 
alongside and speak him kindly ; to mark down upon his 
unbeaten chart, those shoals and quicksands, sunken rocks, 
and hidden dangers, which experience has taught me are 
in his course. 

Cherish a taste for the pursuits of science ; it so chas- 
tens the mind, and ennobles the man. The age teems 



6 

with inteiligence. Your advantages are rare. Human 
knowledge is the aggregate of human experience ; daily 
something is added to the general stock — every new princi- 
ple, every fresh fact gathered from nature or her laws, 
is a hnk the more to the chain by which we hope to es- 
cape from the labyrinths of ignorance, and approach the 
gates of everlasting knowledge. With the clue thus length- 
ened and strengthened to guide them, and an increasing 
stock to draw from, these graduates liave enjoyed advan- 
tages of education which none before them have ever pos- 
sessed. Many of the theories which wxre taught to us in 
youth, have been exploded. The text books, which you 
and I, Mr. President, used at school, have become obso- 
lete. New lights have dawned since then. The w^orld is 
older and wiser now, than it was w^hen we were young. 

The youth here have had not only all the advantages of 
education which we had in our day, but they have had the 
benefits also of all the new hghts, the discoveries and im- 
provement that have since been made. They are the grey- 
beards, we the striplings. 

As knowledge increases, our views are enlarged, our 
wants multiplied, and our social condition improved; un- 
der the pressure of newly constituted wants, there has gone 
forth from the schools a spirit of philosophical research 
which gives new strength to the human mind, and imparts 
to the ingenuity of man energies whose compass cannot 
be measured. Ever urging on to fresh conquests of mind 
over matter, the achievements of this spirit are seen in the 
discoveries, the inventions, and improvements which mark 
the times. Almost daily we hear of some new thing, of 
some triumph of mind ovqj- matter, which those who wit- 
ness it are ready to pronounce the ne plus ultra of human 



ingenuity. But to-morrow, the ever busy mind of man, 
acting under the impulse of an age eminently utilitarian, 
pushes on with its discoveries, and finds more room for 
improvement : the powers of ingenuity are again taxed 
with a new idea, and the next day brings forth a plus 
ultra. 

We were not content to snatch the lightning from the 
clouds, and to turn the thunder-bolt aside from its mark ; 
for in the act electricity was discovered to be an important 
agent of nature. Finding that man might rule the hght- 
ning, the utilitarian sought to use it ; as knowledge with 
regard to it has increased, its uses have been extended, until 
ingenuity has contrived to fashion it into wings for thought, 
and then to charge it with the instant delivery of messages 
as far asunder as the poles. 

Philosophers have found new elements. The old dogma 
of fire, earth, air, and water, is exploded. Light, heat, and 
electricity are now the agents ; with these we send invisi- 
ble couriers through the air ; with these we print and paint, 
spin and weave, and endow machinery almost with the at- 
tributes of intelligence. With such agents the world is 
set in motion. Nature employs them in all her works, and 
when man begins to enlist them into his service, he may 
well boast of a step gained, and talk of advancement and 
improvement. 

Studying nature and her works, he has discovered that, 
so far at least as we may judge, all matter is ponderable or 
imponderable ; that the natural state of the former, is a state 
of rest ; and of the latter, a state of motion. That the im- 
ponderables, as light, heat, and electricity, are the agents 
which, acting upon ponderable matter, set the world in 
motion. Life, animate or inanimate, is the power by which 



8 

the thing endowed enlarges itself, and overcomes the force 
of gravitation. It is the imponderables, as light, heat, and 
electricity, v^hich gives this power, which enables the trees 
to lift themselves above the earth, and high up in the air to 
stretch forth their arms to heaven, despite the forces of 
gravitation. These are the agents which give animation 
to things here below, impart motion and preserve harmony 
among the spheres in the firmament above. 

Following up the idea thus expressed by nature, men of 
science, operating with the same agents, have produced 
such revolutions in the moral world, have so enlarged the 
boundaries of knowledge, and that, too, at a rate so rapid, 
and in a time so short, that if the sages of but one gene- 
ration ago could be brought back to life among us, they 
would find themselves at fault in a thousand ways. Dis- 
coveries and inventions, founded on principles of which 
the wisest of them were ignorant, would meet them at every 
turn. In the place of old dogmas, they would discover 
theories and doctrines to them entirely new. Such have 
been the acquisitions to knowledge and the achievements 
of science since their day, that to overtake us they would 
find themselves, instead of teachers, cloistered students. 
Notwithstanding the contrast, we are not yet out of the 
woods. We see here and there a light spot, it is true ; still 
the views of which we boast are made through narrow 
openings and a misty medium. At least we may so infer, 
for the view is actually expanding before our eyes. 

But limited though they be, where is the country to which 
these discoveries do not extend, or what the mind not ut- 
terly barren and opake that they have not enhghtened and 
improved ? 

They are heard on the sea, they are seen on the land ; 
and though not so obvious, their impress is as palpable upon 



the schools. They work in a circle. In the schools they 
begin, to the schools they return. Improvements in edu- 
cation gave rise to the spirit of research, of discovery, 
and invention, which now pervades the world. Action and 
re-action are reciprocals. This spirit reflects its achieve- 
ments back upon education, and every time it returns to 
Alma Mater, it acquires fresh energies, and continues its 
round with renewed vigor. 

Beauties far more lovely, poetry far more sublime, lessons 
inexpressibly more eloquent and instructive than any which 
the classic lore of ancient Greece or Rome ever afforded, 
are now to be seen and gathered in the walks of science. 
Physics have ceased to be considered a dry study ; they 
are called beautiful. The discoveries of modern science 
have realized the wildest imaginings of the poet; its re- 
alities far surpass in grandeur and sublimity the most im- 
posing fictions of romance ; its empire is the earth, the 
ocean, and the heavens ; its speculations embrace all ele- 
ments, all space, all time — objects the most minute, ob- 
jects the most grand. Carrying its researches to the small- 
est atoms which the microscope can render accessible to 
our visual organs, it comprehends all those glorious and 
magnificent objects which the telescope reveals in the 
boundless regions of space.* 

It is a discovery of modern science that the atmosphere 
in one point of view is a sort of laboratory for receiving 
dead organic matter, and that the plants and trees are con- 
densing machines for preparing it again for animal use. All 
breathing creatures, with every respiration, cast out into 
the air a quantity of matter that has coursed their veins, 
and exhausted its force in giving vitality to their systems. 
Every moment millions and milhons of pounds of this ex 



'Dr. Man tell- 
2 



10 

hausted matter are cast into the air. From the lungs and 
organs of respiration of each one of you here present, there 
are thrown off' nearly 1000 lbs. per annum of what to each 
has been flesh and blood. Imagine, then, the quantity from 
the whole animal kingdom, including every living creature, 
from the smallest insect up to lordly man ; and yet this thin 
air, w hich receives it all and is never surcharged, is to the 
earth in extent but as the down to the peach. 

By the action of light upon this ejected matter it is 
decomposed, and resolved into gaseous substances, which 
enter largely into the components of trees, plants, and 
vegetables, constituting in them the nutritious parts of 
animal food. We hunger, and take for nourishment this 
same carbon again into the stomach, there elaborate it into 
flesh and blood, and again, with every breath, after it has 
performed its office and expended its vitality, cast it forth, 
like the exhausted steam of an engine, into the atmosphere, 
where it is again, in never ceasing round, filtered through 
the vegetable process, and re-adapted for animal use. 

This flesh and blood, which I call mine, has passed this 
round — the animal, the inorganic, the vegetable — and been 
renewed upon me a hundred times since I came into the 
world. 

What a sewer and laboratory may we now see in the at- 
mosphere, by taking into the view the myriads upon myriads 
of moving things that cast out their dead matter into it. Yet 
notwithstanding the extent of the operation, the ages that 
it has been going on, the two parts — the animal which cor- 
rupts, and the vegetable which purifies — are so beautifully 
adjusted and arranged, so wonderfully compensated and 
balanced, that the nicest analysis can detect in the atmos- 
phere not the slightest change as to its components or their 



11 

relative proportions. From such views we are led to the 
conclusion that the animal and vegetable parts of creation 
are in exact counterpoise. In infinite wisdom they are so 
balanced, that there is never an msect too much on one 
side, nor a green leaf too little on the other. Arrived at 
this point, the student of science turns from the book of 
nature to the volume of inspiration, and under the lights of 
these profitable studies, finds new beauties in the assurance 
that a ^'sparrow falls not to the ground without knowledge.'' 

The idea that the grass, the herb, and the fruit tree 
yielding fruit, are "condensing machines," is of French 
conception. And that machine must be a powerful con- 
denser indeed, which can compress invisible gases into 
tangible substances, and present them to our senses in the 
shape of the hardest wood and the tallest trees that are 
grown in the forest. It is a discovery of modern chemis- 
try that this machine derives its power from the action of 
the yellow ray of the spectrum upon the gases of which I 
have spoken.* The " wave theory'' of light explains the 
motion. Making more vibrations in a single second of 
time than the pendulum of a clock would have done since 
the world began, this ray of light gives the force which, 
operating upon the ponderable molecules that float in the 
air, produces alike the smallest sprig and the largest tree. 
Think only for a moment of the whole vegetable world ; 
consider the magnitude and extent of its productions, the 
weight and size of the trees of the forest, the power it must 
have required to lift their broad tops so high up in the air; 
yet they are but the resultants of this force, the exponents 
of an imponderable something acting upon ponderable 
matter. 

The right contemplation of this subject fills the mind 



•Professor Draper's lecture. 



12 

with wonder and admiration. Bowed down under a sense 
of his httleness, the man of science thus finds tongues in 
the trees, which in mute eloquence teach him lessons and 
impress him with truths more sublime, beautiful, and in- 
structive, than all that were ever conceived in ancient 
Rome, or uttered by sage in classic Greece. 

As we extend the view, we find room for more enlarged 
and lofty conceptions. Though chemical analysis does 
not reach back far enough to detect any changes in the 
components of the atmosphere, we know that there have 
•been changes. Nature has recorded the fact on tablets of 
the rock, and left evidences of it in the coal fields and other 
remains which are scattered through the earth. The hght 
and heat from the anthracite fire, which cheers and warms 
us in a winter's day. came from the sun ages and ages ago, 
and have been bottled away, as it were, in the earth for 
man's use, and the present economy of nature and the 
world. The coal measures of the earth cover many thou- 
sand square miles ; they, too, are filled by the work of the 
yellow ray ; for it is well known that coal is of vegetable 
origin. It is almost all carbon. When the trees and 
plants flourished which produced this coal, the components 
of the atmosphere were very different from what they now 
are, for the carbon of this coal was abstracted from the air. 
Why, then, it may be asked, seeing the quantities of coal 
that are now consumed, returhing its carbon back into the 
atmosphere, does not the air become tainted, and again 
unfit for animals constituted as we are ? Reasoning by 
analogy, the answer is plain. Are not the vegetable pro- 
ductions of the earth, and the population of the world, 
greater now, than they probably have ever been ? Under 
the improvements of agriculture, one acre of ground is now 



13 

made to produce as much as many acres formerly did. 
Taking one year with another, the amount of vegetable 
productions is just sufficient for the sustenance of the ani- 
mals. Supply and demand are in as rigid proportions here 
as elsewhere. Nature is no doubt as admirably endowed 
with the regulating principles for the conservation of quanti- 
ties, as we know she is with those for the conservation of 
areas. If from the combustion of coal, and the consumption 
of food, there be a greater quantity of gases evolved and dis- 
charged into the air, there is on the other hand an increas- 
ed vegetable production sufficient to absorb and condense 
it. The stream is not enlarged, its current only is quick- 
ened. Like the water in the pipes through which our ci- 
ties are supplied : the population of the city and the con- 
sumption of water may have doubled or trebled, yet the 
quantity in the pipes is a constant — the stream through is 
only more rapid, but the volume is the same ; so with these 
gases through the atmosphere. 

Which way so ever we turn, we see the most exquisite dis- 
play of wisdom and harmony, symmetry and beauty, every 
where preserved between cosmical arrangements and ter- 
restrial adaptations. Following up the clue which, by the 
achievements of science, has been placed in our hands, we 
might go on and trace out the beneficent designs with which 
wisdom assigned the proportions between the water and 
the dry land, the sandy deserts and the fruitful plains. The 
Potomac river, the St. Lawrence, the great lakes, and all 
those waters which run down to the sea, are again taken 
up by this downy atmosphere, and carried back to the 
mountains. Imagine the rivers of only this continent — the 
Mississippi and the Amazon among them — running back in 
constant streams through the air to their sources in the 



14 

upper country. There is a constant ratio between the 
quantity that runs down and the quantity that is carried 
back. Were evaporation to cease, or the atmosphere to 
stand still — were the winds never to blow, our rivers would 
become dry, and the earth itself unfit for man's use. What 
a circulator, purifier, cooler, and condenser! In every point 
of view this atmosphere is a grand machine— perfect in all 
its parts, wonderful in its offices, sublime in its operations. 

There are certain nodding flowers of the field which 
give an instructive lesson upon the subject of cosmical ar* 
rangements, and show how beautiful are the views which 
open out before the student of nature, as patiently he turns 
over leaf after leaf of her exquisite works. These flowers 
are so constituted, that at a certain stage of their growth 
they must bend the stalk and hang their heads for the pur- 
poses of fecundation. When they have been duly impreg- 
nated with the seed-bearing principle, their vegetabk health 
requires them again to hft their heads and stand erect. Now, 
it is as easy to show, that if the earth had been greater or 
smaller, the stalk of this flower stronger or weaker, it could 
not bow its head at the right time, fecundation could not 
take place, the plant never could have borne seed after its 
kind, and its species would have become extinct with the 
first individual planted by its maker. 

Hence we infer that, on the morning of creation, the fu* 
ture well-being even of the little snow-drop, whose appear- 
ance by our garden walks in early spring we hail with so 
much delight, was considered — that when it was made, the 
magnitude and dimensions of the whole earth, from the 
equator to the poles, from centre to circumference, were 
taken into the account and weighed with it; and that exact- 
ly that degree of strength was given to its fibres which is 
best suited to its vegetable health. 



15 

If, therefore, such care was had for only one flower of 
the field, how much more in the whole system of terres- 
trial adaptations, between the air and its gases, the land 
and water, the animal and the vegetable, must care have 
been taken for the well-being and preservation of all things ; 
and above all for man, for whose use all things were made. 

Arrived at this point, our favorite studies lead directly 
from nature up to nature's God ; and the youm, with his 
mind thus directed, finds only a greater force in the em- 
phasis of the prophet, "Who hath measured the waters in 
the hollow of his hand ; and meted out heaven with the 
span ; and comprehended the dust of the earth in a mea- 
sure ; and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills 
in a balance ?" 

Disquisition is stale ; commentary is tame ; all the works 
of nature abound with lofty doctrines, wholesome in their 
effects, useful in their results. They chasten the mind 
and ennoble the disposition. He who reads by such lights 
and doubts, is no philosopher, but the drivelling companion 
of the undevout astronomer. When I see a youth enter 
college, having in him the true spirit of mathematical 
investigation and philosophical research, I mark him for 
a useful man, and a noble example in his generation. 
" God works by geometry." Impressed with the sub- 
lime precept of his favorite study, his course from the 
beginning is like the first flight of the lark in the morning, 
" upward and onward, with a hymn in his heart." 

There are minds whose exuberant fancy leads them off 
from the paths of science into the regions of fable and ro- 
mance ; there they build their airy castles, and fighting them 
up with the brilliancy of their imaginations, they revel on 
with fairy queens or goblins bold. There is a reality in store 



16 

for the youth of such a mind. Under the pressure of an 
age eminently utihtarian as this is, he will learn at last, when 
perhaps the spring time of life is past and gone, and it is too 
late for the lesson ; but sooner or later he will learn the 
truth, that " where fairies have danced their mystic ring, 
though flowers may blow, fruit will hardly come." 



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